Gillian Clarke is an accomplished poet, playwright, editor, educator, and translator (from Welsh). Born in Cardiff, Clarke's Welsh heritage plays a central role in her writing, and she is an important figure in contemporary Welsh poetry. Clarke's ancestors were millers and hill farmers known as gwerin (rural folk). The poet's mother—in an effort to make her daughter more "posh" and better prepared for upward social mobility—forbade Clarke from learning and speaking Welsh at home. Outside the home, Clarke's father sabotaged this plan by sharing Welsh words with his daughter. Clarke's mother did, however, incorporate nursery rhymes into Clarke's early upbringing, which Clarke has credited as "the most important thing that’s ever happened to [her]." This provided a foundation for Clarke's literacy and planted seeds of love for poetry that would sprout later in Clarke's life. She currently advocates for more emphasis on creativity, literacy, and the arts in education systems.
Clarke learned Welsh as a form of rebellion against her mother. Today, the poet primarily writes in English with interspersed Welsh words, and she continues the rich tradition of the beirdd gwlad (country poets) who worked in the fields and composed poems. Clarke has defined poetry as "word music that gathers something into a very colorful phrase which has reverberations." By this she means that a poem's sensory details can be heard, felt, imagined, and remembered by the reader. Clarke has also stated that truth is an integral part of her poetics. In other words, she does not fictionalize or heavily embellish details in her poems. In addition to being forbidden from speaking Welsh, contemporary poetry and women's poetry were kept out of Clarke's reach early on in her education. But she went on to delve deep into these genres, becoming an essential figure in each.
Clarke's poems are rooted in Welsh landscapes, and thematic throughlines in her oeuvre include nature, domesticity, womanhood, war, the life of animals, and the interweaving of multiple chronologies. Clarke has received notable awards and recognitions, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012. She was named as Wales' National Poet in 2008, and was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards in 2011, the latter being a society of Welsh-language poets, writers, musicians, and others who have contributed to the Welsh language and to public life in Wales. Still a prolific poet and writer, Clarke also serves as president of Ty Newydd, the writers’ centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. She lives with her family on an eighteen-acre smallholding in Ceredigion, Wales, where they care for the land.
The poet, playwright, teacher, lecturer, editor, and translator Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff in 1937. She is considered an integral figure in contemporary Welsh poetry, leading her to become the third National Poet of Wales in 2008 and the...
